Quite often when I run across things on the web that I think might be interesting to ponder, I drag the URL to my desktop, amassing a little collection of things to revisit when I get a free moment. Unfortunately, I’ve collected quite a few things over the past month and am just now getting around to going through them. Some of them will end up as bookmarks for later, but some have just grown stale in their contemporary relevance. Some I will comment on more fully in individual posts later, but most I’ll just list here for posterity. Warning: they’re quite random.

• Interesting documentation of one individual’s search for bluetooth sync-capable phones for his iBook.
• Folder Synchronizer looks like an interesting utility to keep two folders on different computers in sync. Might be able to use this to keep iTunes libraries in sync between my PowerBook and a server.
• It’s interesting to read Ned’s perspective on things of a coding nature; He and I seem to share a certain similar pragmatic outlook on development practices. Here he’s talking about throwing exceptions, and he doesn’t particularly like Java’s approach. Nor do I.
• Another installment in the “Hollywood really does think it’s the center of the universe”, Brad and Jennifer think they can do diplomacy better. Give me the standard break.
• Ann Coulter, in her standard biting style, trashes the Libs for their trashing of Rush and his addiction to painkillers.
• Nice article covering the differences in the various DVD media.
• Main Eclipse project download site. Got to get this running on Panther soon.
• There may be the slightest shred of validity to this claim, but I doubt it. I don’t buy the whole “WiFi is frying our little one’s brains” business.
• Unofficial Cocoa Dev FAQ. Very Cool.
• Motion Tracking plug-in for FinalCut Pro. Need to check this out.
• Good article on understanding the real-time rendering engine in FCP 4.0
• CSS Best Practices from the guy who brought us CSS ZenGarden.
• Another bit of PC gone completely awry: Master/Slave as a technical term banned by LA County. Geez.

It’s nice to have a clean desktop again.

Cynthia and I managed to finally see Matrix: Revolutions this weekend, and my one word review is: blah.

The first 30 minutes really drug on. Bad dialog, worse acting. The speaking parts were barely intelligible (the diction, not the sentence structure, though that wasn’t that good). Fortunately the action picked up after that, but the story didn’t really get much better.

They “attempted” to wrap a few things up, but I found the ending a little bit of a letdown. No big revelations. Just kinda ended. With a whimper. The final fight scene was a bit anticlimactic. Blah.

O well, had to see it once, and I’m sure I’ll get it on DVD to go back through it again. But even the action scenes didn’t hold the attention like they did in the second. Won’t be seeing it again on the big screen. Hope the extras on the DVD make it worthwhile.

Now, the Return of the King, on the other hand, shouldn’t disappoint. It’s looking spectacular.

So I decided to exercise my carpentry skills again and did the finish work on the oven hole myself. Turned out to not be that difficult, although a table saw for the ripping of the trim would’ve been nice. But a jigsaw worked out fine and now the oven is installed and working (cooking wonderfully) and I got the installation fee refunded. Bonus!

I’ll post a picture as soon as I can. The work is pretty good, if I do say so myself.

Cynthia’s birthday present (one, anyway) was delivered this morning, a brand new oven. And, wouldn’t you know it, the hole in the wall is too big, so they couldn’t install it. So in the garage it sits, and now I have to figure out how to shrink the hole to make it fit. Wonderful.

If you’ve arrived here looking for the Dallas FinalCut Pro User’s Group website, I apologize. Due to a slight misconfiguration of the webserver, http://dallasfcpug.org wasn’t resolving properly and was sending people directly to the default site on my server, which is this homepage. I’ve since corrected the issue, but you might be experiencing some weird caching issue. If that’s the case, try to go here: http://www.dallasfcpug.org.

Yes, I’m a slug. As much as I hate to admit it, I haven’t seen the third in the Matrix trilogy yet. I just can’t seem to make my schedule work out so that I can take three hours and go see it. No, the reviews it’s getting (fairly mixed, but leaning toward the bad side) won’t stop me from going to see it on the big screen… I’m fairly confident that I’ll at least enjoy the action and special effects work. Just not sure when that’s going to be yet. It has to be before December, tho; I don’t want to get two movies behind when Return of the King releases…

It’s being reported over on Slashdot from an article over here that the original trilogy of Star Wars (episodes 4-6) will be released on DVD in September, 2004.

Also posted is a review of the second Lord Of The Rings extended version, which hits the shelves November 18. Looks awesome, as the first one was.

As Bill Murray said in Caddyshack, “It’s in the hole!”

Well, if you’ve been following the saga of the TV Cabinet I built back in July, you’ll remember that while I built a pretty nice cabinet in the wall to house the TV (if I do say so myself), I hadn’t yet figured out a way to get my 36″ 150+ pound TV up into the hole, which is 9 feet off the floor.

Well, with much help from my dad, it’s up there now. And as I’ve said pretty much all along, if we ever sell this house, the TV is a part of the deal. I don’t see it coming down.

Basically, we (well, mostly dad with a little design help from me) managed to weld together an “elevator” of sorts, fashioned from a section of pallet-rack shelving. Using a movable platform and a couple of come-along ratchet pulleys, we were able to hoist the TV straight up to about 8 1/2 feet, then lift it the remainder of the way into the hole.

Only minor hiccups along the way (at one point our platform became tightly wedged in the frame, but a generous amount of WD-40 and a lot of banging with a ball-peen hammer and we got it past the sticky point). It took longer to construct it than it did to actually raise the TV. The side sections were too large to come into the room normally, so they had to come in the bay window.

When I constructed the cabinet, I built a small door in the back so that once the TV was in place I could connect it up from the attic. This worked beautifully. The only thing left is to work a little on the IR receiver so that the remote works from the bed reliably. Right now it wants to receive IR signals from the remote more dead on, not at a steep angle from below. A little repositioning should do the trick nicely.

By the way, the cabinet’s measurements were exactly right. The TV fit perfectly, with just enough margin to be able to angle it properly for viewing from the bed.

Here are the pictures from Halloween 2003.

Matthew went as a laundry basket, Michael was a tornado, and Madison was a fairy princess/ballerina.

We did some trick-or-treating around the neighborhood and then went to a fall festival at a local church where the kids played games, jumped in the bounce house, and generally got more candy than they needed. Good time had by all. Sugar induced coma not withstanding…